Self-Sufficiency in Style
struggling to go green?
..
|
Self-Sufficiency in Style struggling to go green?
|
|
|
|
As this is being written, the temperature is 80F, in England in June. That is not abnormal, just a little unusual. Unusual weather does seem to have increased in frequency over the last few decades. Governments do seem to be taking global warming, and the closely linked sustainability, seriously. That does not mean they are right. Governments usually get things wrong. Today's imperative usually turns out to have been yesterday's fad. |
| What does self-sufficiency,
or even survivalism, have to do with going green? Not much really. It is just possible to imagine a self-sufficiency operation that would be very environment unfriendly. And we can certainly see about us some lunatic green schemes that pound the living daylights out of unrenewable resources. Millions of multicoloured plastic containers for the different kinds of waste, don't seem that sensible when the financial and environmental costs of production, collection and processing are taken into account. However, the fact remains that true self-sufficiency really does take less from the environment and is a very green way of life with few inherent dangers. |
Not Guilty! |
|
Endlessly Renewable. |
We don't need a special bin for our glass,
much is recycled without even leaving the homestead. We don't take our garden rubbish to the collective compost heap; we have our own. Our wood-burners and wood fires take constantly growing wood, often from our own woodland. Any extra carbon dioxide simply make the trees grow faster. |
|
So the self-sufficiency household has little to learn, from profligate governments and multinational scientists, about the arts of recycling the earth's resources. We do it automatically, without thought, expense or compulsion. |
|
In the same way, self-sufficiency has nothing to do with the organic
movement. The smallholder could drench their vegetables, fruit and animal feed with undesirable additives, preservatives, medications, antibiotics and flavour enhancers. Leaving aside commonsense, there is no reason why they should not. But they don't have either the knowledge, money or chemicals easily available. These things take time and money on a scale only worthwhile for mono-agriculture and industrial food on a big scale. Anyway, the smallholders are the ones that have to eat their own produce. Most prefer to allow nature to fight it out with the bugs and pests. They don't use much in the way of chemicals, and are almost always more organic than the purest "official organic farmer", without even noticing. |
Organic is mostly about selling, not living. |
|
Encouraging the man with the clipboard. |
If they were to join the organic movement; they would find no advantage and
probably have little patience with regulations and inspectors. Yet another example of where the individualist, with no encouragement betters the often rather self-righteous environmentalists and greens. However, many self-sufficiency buffs do have very great sympathy for the great international movement that they don't need and actually outperform every day. |
|
Yet, at the very moment, when self-sufficiency has risen to the occasion in almost accidentally encouraging and sponsoring green policies on an individual basis, they come under attack. If our planet is in danger from global warming and pandemics human, animal and plant - and it remains an unproven "if"; the very people showing the way, were being bullied out of existence. |
|
|
Ever increasing regulations are driving self-sufficiency underground. The
industrial farming "fad" for traceability of food, means that livestock
animals have to be tagged and documented at all times.
The over application of rules designed to control devious miscreants in livestock marketing to food factories are being applied to the small guys who are no problem to anyone. Most of their meat is for their own family's consumption. The little that may be sold, goes to friends and neighbours. New "animal welfare" transport rules mean that the kindly transport of an orphan lamb in the back of the family car is illegal. You need a specialist, probably with a truck. How environmentally friendly is that? or better for a lamb? |
Forget the car for transporting small animals - and prepare for a deluge of paper. |
|
The goddess Shiva has nothing on the average agriculture official, when it comes to destruction. |
When the law does not support the
restriction, there are an ever increasing host of officials dedicated to
finding a way of stopping the small man. What they cannot control, they seek to destroy. |
|
The small landowner can no longer handle many types of rubbish, once
harmlessly buried on his own property. Rules intended to control vast industrial buildings are applied to small sheds. Standards designed to be applied to stately homes are applied to humble cottages. For the self-sufficiency enthusiast, he can no longer protect his immediate environment and now spends much time and money seeking to find a way through Byzantine regulations. The results are that he is unable to do the job himself and finishes up with an unsympathetic design made with unsuitable materials pandering to whatever is currently fashionable in architectural circles. |
The regulatory maze. |
|
Rebel? Wot me? Merely dragging me renewable energy back 'ome |
Although the State continues to harass the small people intent on producing
their own food, there are many signs of defiance, of exasperation and a
downright refusal to be intimidated. If the "powers that be" are right, and we do face a crisis, or maybe more than one, they will have to change their tune. The first shoots of a true Green and Organic revolution are emerging from a swamp of inappropriate regulation, corruption, self interest and mindless bureaucracy. To be independent of an external food supply produces people well capable of changing the world. Interest in self-sufficiency continues to grow, throughout the English speaking world. Year by year, more little chicken huts appear in the countryside. Vegetable gardens grow where oil seed rape once had ascendancy. People everywhere find the courage to admit that they have a dream; and an every increasing number take the first faltering steps to a new lifestyle. They may well become a powerful force for good in an increasingly dangerous and conformist world. |
|
There will come a time when government will fully support its more independent and self-reliant citizens, recognising their unique contribution to an ever more crowded world. Encouragement and help will replace regulation and harassment. Admiration and assistance will sweep away the old certainties that big is always best, and that the international conglomerates must be protected, whatever their crimes against humanity. |
|
|
...naturally green self-sufficiency - from the timeless Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. June, 2006 |
